In light of my comments on the old reviews I republished as part of my 5 year anniversary thing, I thought I’d expand upon the reasons why I don’t write reviews anymore.
First, I don’t think I’m very good at writing them, so I don’t! Secondly, I don’t feel that the writing style of a traditional review really suits me. Personally I prefer to write what I did like about a game, what I didn’t like about a game, and then expand on that. Sadly, I don’t see this in most reviews I read on the internet, and in some magazines these days. In most reviews I get the feeling that the person writing it is acting as if he or she is the centre of all knowledge on the subject, there can be too much authority in the tone of their writing at times, and that their opinion is to be taken as fact, not opinion. This is also a reason why I tend to keep away from “discussion” topics on some of the larger forums I frequent, as these “factual opinions” often clash, and it’s not pretty.
I don’t feel as if my opinions matter more than anyone else’s, and I certainly don’t feel that my opinion would be authoritative enough to write a review for a website or magazine that currently adopt this reviewing style. I would rather concentrate on my thoughts, feelings and experiences while I am playing the game, my journey through it – I do this on the forum, and encourage others to post this way rather than offer up useless insights like “This game is shit” or “This is the best game ever”. Every now and again I encounter a game that moves me, be it in a good or bad way, and I feel compelled to write in a more formal fashion, going into more detail, which usually ends up on here.
Whatever you’d call this formal write-up, I don’t know for sure. Perhaps it would be classed as a “review”, but I do hope that you wouldn’t immediately associate it with the current trend of “my opinion is fact” , written by self-important “authorities”; it’s just my thoughts on a game that made me want to write about my experiences with it. I do realise that any reviews out there are generally nothing more than the authors thoughts on something, and I’m not saying they’re all bad, but as I mentioned earlier, it’s the attitude behind the words that makes them worthless in my eyes.
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